Mental Health & Neurodevelopmental Services · Patient experience
From three responses a month to more than six hundred a year.
How The Edinburgh Practice used simple, low-friction feedback collection to unlock meaningful insight from clients for whom most traditional feedback routes can often be inaccessible.
50+ staff receiving weekly feedback updates
200× increase in responses in year one
2 core questions — by design
THE CHALLENGE
The barrier was not willingness — it was accessibility
The Edinburgh Practice provides specialist mental health, therapy, and neurodevelopmental assessment services for adults and children, includingmany clients with ADHD and Autism.
The practice already valued patient feedback, but traditional collection methods were proving ineffective for the way many clients naturally engage.
Long surveys created friction. Online forms sent after appointments were often forgotten. Raising concerns directly with a receptionist or clinician could feel socially difficult or emotionally draining — even when the issue itself mattered to the client.
Before introducing ViewPoint kiosks, the practice’s existing online survey process generated only three or four responses per month.
The challenge was not what the practice wanted to ask. It was how and when clients were being invited to respond.
”Clients have many things to remember and prioritise on their visit to the practice, having the stand at our main door, at the point of leaving, is exactly what makes it work for them.”
The practice needed a feedback approach that felt immediate, anonymous, low-pressure, and easy to complete in the moment — without adding complexity for clients already managing cognitive or emotional overload.
WHAT CHANGED
Designed to remove friction
The practice introduced two key surveys from a single ViewPoint kiosk: one for adults and another designed for children and younger visitors.
The surveys themselves were intentionally simple.
Adults are asked two core questions:
- How would you rate your experience?
- Would you recommend the service?
A free-text comments option allows clients to expand further if they choose.
The children’s survey follows the same structure using more age-appropriate wording.
Importantly, the practice kept the core questions consistent from the outset. Rather than continually redesigning surveys, they focused on building a stable, comparable dataset over time.
The simplicity was deliberate. The goal was not to maximise survey length or capture exhaustive information — it was to create a feedback process clients would genuinely use.
600+ responses collected in the first year
RESULTS
Feedback became part of how the practice runs
The increase in response volume fundamentally changed the quality and reliability of insight available to the practice.
Moving from a handful of responses each month to more than 600 in the first year meant feedback was no longer shaped primarily by the small number of clients already inclined to complete surveys. The practice was now hearing from a much broader cross-section of people using the service.
Just as importantly, feedback became visible across the organisation.
Responses are shared directly with more than 50 clinicians and staff through the practice’s weekly Friday update, with comments reproduced exactly as clients submitted them — including children’s feedback; emojis and all.
Rather than being condensed into quarterly summaries or filtered into management reporting alone, feedback reaches the people best placed to act on it within days of it being submitted.
The result is a much more immediate and connected feedback culture across the practice.
Creating a lower-pressure route to speak up
Insights clients might never have raised in person
One of the most significant outcomes has been the type of feedback clients now feel comfortable sharing.
Several practical issues surfaced through the kiosks that staff believe would never have been raised face-to-face — not because they were unimportant, but because the social effort required to mention them directly felt too high.
One regular wheelchair-using client used the kiosk to highlight missing accessibility provisions within the building. The issue was addressed quickly once identified.
Other feedback highlighted:
- accessibility items missing from facilities
- maintenance issues within waiting areas
- refreshments clients valued during appointments
- practical environmental improvements that affected comfort and reassurance
Individually, many of these issues were relatively small. Collectively, they shaped how welcomed, supported, and understood clients felt while using the service.
“Some things people feel uncomfortable saying to a receptionist — they might think they’re too busy, or that it’s not important enough. The kiosk gives them a way.”
Children’s feedback as a unique source of insight
Hearing perspectives clinical conversations often miss
One unexpected outcome was how consistently children engaged with the free-text feedback option — and how specific their comments often were.
The simplicity of the survey proved particularly well suited to the practice’s neurodivergent client group, reducing the cognitive effort involved in participating while still giving clients space to express themselves in their own words.
Children’s comments in particular surfaced observations that would rarely emerge during clinical sessions themselves: practical details, environmental preferences, and emotional reactions that mattered to young people attending regularly but might otherwise remain invisible to staff.
Because feedback is shared weekly across the practice, teams can identify and respond to recurring themes quickly rather than waiting for formal review cycles.
Feedback scores and submission volumes are now included within the practice’s monthly KPI reporting alongside operational and performance metrics — not as supplementary information, but as part of how the organisation routinely understands service quality.
WHAT'S NEXT
Building on a consistent foundation
Having maintained the same core questions throughout the first year, the practice is now exploring ways to introduce targeted topic-based questions alongside its established benchmark data.
Mental Health Awareness Month has been identified as an early opportunity to trial additional themed questions while still maintaining continuity with existing reporting.
What the practice has demonstrated most clearly is that, for many client groups, the challenge is not persuading people to give feedback.
It is designing a process that makes giving feedback feel genuinely accessible in the first place.
